Anti-LGBT Hate Group Focus on the Family Declares Itself A Church With IRS To Evade Taxes and Disclosures

Focus on the Family often couches its homophobic rhetoric in “save the children” language.

Focus on the Family, the behemoth Religious Right organization founded by James Dobson, has declared itself to be a church, thereby avoiding a requirement that it file public tax documents, according to IRS records and a document available on the organization’s website.

Focus on the Family filed as a non-church 501(c)(3) nonprofit as recently as the 2014 fiscal year, submitting to the IRS a publicly available Form 990 as most tax-exempt nonprofits are required to do. But when the group posted a Form 990 for the 2015 fiscal year on its website—dated October 26, 2017, and reporting a massive budget of $89 million—it was emblazoned with the message “Not required to file and not filed with the IRS. Not for public inspection.”

Gail Harmon, an attorney who has advised nonprofits on tax law for more than 30 years, said that she had never before seen a nonprofit organization declare itself a church. “I just found it shocking,” she said. “There’s nothing about them that meets the traditional definition of what a church is,” she said. “They don’t have a congregation, they don’t have the rites of various parts of a person’s life. There’s a whole system for what a church is.”

There is clear biblical precedent for this. It’s just like the story about how Jesus helped the money changers reincorporate into pass-through entitles in order to avoid double taxation from the Romans, while maintaining their right to engage in nakedly partisan advocacy and anti-LGBT hate.

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Will Kohler is a noted LGBT historian, journalist and owner of Back2Stonewall.com. A longtime gay activist, Will fought on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic with ACT-UP and continues fighting today for LGBT acceptance and full equality. Will’s work has been referenced in notable media venues as MSNBC and BBC News, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Hollywood Reporter, and Raw Story,

2 thoughts on “Anti-LGBT Hate Group Focus on the Family Declares Itself A Church With IRS To Evade Taxes and Disclosures”

This dodge probably will not float with the IRS. They have released new guidelines for (c)(3) charities that have effected some old long standing organizations Eg. the Fraternal Order of Police. I know first hand from my families charities list. The IRS has begun to look harder at these charities and what they do with the monies raised. So if there is a “god” they may by making this application lose all non profit status and pay taxes which might just be the end of these people. Hallelujah!